Sick of strife, I declare myself white flag

So, you come up to me with a tail wag

Dare me to prove to you my tenderness

Challenge me end our war with a caress.

I take your words to heart, hold out a hand

To be friends, a lick, I’ll gladly withstand

I rejoice that our fights will soon conclude

I offer amity but you see food.

I must commend you for being so shrewd

Pretending at peace so you’ll win the feud

‘Twas a mistake, you beg me understand

As if that will spare you my reprimand.

Now, I have learned not to extend sweetness

And greet bloodthirsty maws with bitterness

Then vindictively watch them choke and gag

Tasting the second chance for which they nag.

I have made what seems to be a mistake.

I know how to play dumb, stay and obey

I even know I should shake empty hands

And I am glad to hold them, make new friends

So long as I have not been left starving…

I am so good!

The last time an empty hand reached for me

I’m sad to say since there wasn’t food there

I did not give paw, just opened my maw

And took a bite of the hand that should feed.

It is quite an easy error to make…

I am still good!

I take a moment for watching

I breathe a moment without longing

Tall grass playing with my thoughts

I feel a rare laughing.

I never said you were dead to me

When goodbye seems like more than enough

To make me become a medium.

You do not need to speak to be heard

When I’m so very full of your ghosts

That, in the absence of news of you

I find myself decrypting quiet.

The phantom pains of my shortcomings

Revenants wail I am grieving you

Shades brimming with recrimination.

I’m a worthless blight, just a burden

I’m a beloved soul missed each day

After seeing myself through your eyes

I’m full of spectres guessing your tone.

How can I move past this cruel haunting?

Where can I go to find my own voice?

We overlap like do broken shards:

I bleed out to know myself from you

For peace of mind, by strength of spirit

I dig graves for laters we won’t have

Funerals for distinct after lives.

There’s freedom in this exorcism

Finally laying our woes to rest

Is this the sepulchral forgiveness?

May your joys and sorrows ignore mine

My triumphs and troubles pass you by

I pray we’re freed from this enmeshed we

May we have separate paradises.

How I’ve thrived in this distance between us.

(Silence proves the fondest way to adore.)

You are an exotic repast and I’d like to partake

But each time I pull you close in order to taste your make

I find myself once again set on the path of collapse

Devastation, it awaits me for my gluttonous lapse.

Others swear you safe to sample

Yet when I heed their example

Tears well up and I cannot breathe

Your presence gives me cause to grieve.

Perhaps there is some raw emotion that I’ve ill prepared

But all of these repeated poisonings have left me scared.

So many love you, I cannot claim you to be toxic

However, I do believe that I might be allergic.

Sweet at distance, sour at lip

What a strange fruit your loving is.

Stanzas have lost literature’s respect 

Leaving it quite the act of sedition 

To keep honouring that old tradition. 

Poets take up words when they feel the urge 

With rapier wit, our dwindling army fights 

But those of my craft rarely know spotlights.

As recognition is hard to obtain 

Flowing lines lose in popularity 

Making mine courage or temerity.  

Perhaps that’s just the nature of the trade 

To dare greet those who don’t appreciate 

With faith in the worth of what I create. 

That art is how we decorate spaces 

And music is how we decorate time 

I have heard it be said, but what of rhyme? 

Verses do well to embellish the mind 

Take thoughts or emotions and leave them gilt

A sharp blade thus beckons for a fine hilt. 

Most tools can become hammers when faced with a nail 

But people are not tools, when treated thus they ail 

Tasked to do what doesn’t suit me, I often fail 

Hence why I seek means to walk on my proper trail.  

Intimately, I know 

Being unable to say no 

To functions that frustrate or bring me woe

To work to which I have to force myself to go.

People all crave to do that which they were meant for. 

Wrong occupations make labour a chore 

Fulfillment lacking, one is poor 

Forever seeking more. 

I can sense how feels a rusty hinge when it’s moved 

Or what knows a stiff-bound book opened and perused 

Proper employment leaves a thing feeling enthused

There’s joy in the exercise of being well-used.

Greatness is a prophecy that has haunted me

Hounded and hunted for all this high potential

Till I felt less a person, more ornamental

Like I was merely a trophy one can expose

Always striving to impress, never in repose.

Unsurprisingly, this is enough to depress.

I plummeted from grace just like a shooting star

Or perhaps like a general losing a war

Each achievement is battle then, again, drums pound

I am once more called to best myself at their sound.

Stress is a staccato rhythm I always know

As everything I do must be done without flaw

Running myself into the ground, I try to awe

Still it feels like I can’t, any footing, regain

As I move faster through monotonous terrain.

The weight of expectations others have is this:

I should ascend higher and flow without ebbing

Stay poised in perfection, success never ending

Always rising, I’m always rising towards more

But no one has answers when asked what I climb for.

There came a day I overcame a mountain’s peak.

I cheered at its summit, then saw I was too spent

To even try to initiate a descent.

Thought performance’s pinnacle can’t be surpassed

I’m stranded in triumphant, so here I must last.

It is the end of winter, I’ve not yet seen spring

The landlady hails me, I hear my doorbell ring

For what will be, unbeknownst to me, the last time.

I have a box left unopened in permanence

It’s the most stable thing about my residence

As a roof can be lost at the toss of a dime.

I’ve lived here four months short of my record of ten.

I have come to expect not knowing where or when

I will find myself forced to relocate once more.

Too heavy for nomad, yet not sedentary

Just scraping past homeless, housed in uncertainty

This is nothing that I have not lived through before.

Torn away when I dare set down a single root

It’s bad luck or my poor judgment, the point is moot

I feel like I am a garden’s most hated weed.

It’s only been six months since I’ve had this dwelling

My hopes rose high enough to be good for felling

I dreamed I’d leave when wanted, yet I leave for need.

Poverty is an endless race to outrun death

New obstacles come, so you never catch your breath

There isn’t a manner to win this marathon.

A lull in the endless storm isn’t safe harbour

No matter what I do, I’m still treading water

I long for land from which I wouldn’t need move on.